Global consumption grew by $10 trillion from 1990 to 2010. So the $10 trillion question is who benefited and how much? In a new paper we explore who have been...
Andy Sumner
Andy Sumner is co-director of the King’s International Development Institute at King’s College London.
He is an interdisciplinary development economist.
His research covers global poverty and Southeast Asia, specifically, Indonesia.
Before taking his position at King’s college, he was a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom.
He holds associate positions at Oxford University at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.
He is a vice president of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes and a council member of the Development Studies Association.
He was listed in Foreign Policy Magazine’s ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ and writes a regular column for Global Policy.
The future of global poverty: What if there were multiple horizons for aid post-2015?
A Brookings paper out this week (here) does something a set of papers have sought to do recently - that is make projections about the future of global...
On inequality, let’s do the Palma (because the Gini is so last century)
There’s one measure of inequality that gets all the attention – the Gini index. The Gini was developed in the early 1900s – in fact about 100 years ago – by...
Can Obama bend it like Bono?
What do Obama and Bono have in common? Both have proposed that the world should seek to end extreme poverty over the next twenty years or so. Obama said so in...
Inequality: What’s the policy narrative?
Inequality has got much more on the radar of policy wonks over the last year (see for example the usual inequality interest at UNICEF and UNDP but also the...
What is catalytic foreign aid?
Is ‘aid exit’ or 'catalytic aid' a new development strategy for poor countries? You might think so judging by comments buzzing around about 'catalytic...
Politics, hunger and the muppets
Sesame Street is addressing head on the issues of 50m Americans living with hunger (see Alex post here on the staggering data in the Economist recently) by...
Who spends what on foreign aid and where?
The 'traditional' foreign aid donors (aka the OECD DAC) released it's latest report (here) and stats on aid (here) this week. This is of course amid different...
How to unseat foreign aid mantras?
I just finished a fantastic and provocative book – a wake up call to the aid and development ‘industry’ (of which I am a part so good to be woken up once in a...
What is resilience?
Just back from a lot of discussion on scarcity, resilience and crises at a conference convened by the Development Studies Association and European Association...
Are the world poverty goals for 2015 on-track? It depends when you ask…
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - the UN Poverty Targets - are just a few years away from judgment day – 2015 – so it’s a pretty good time to ask how...
Ducks, Gyms and Chinese foreign aid
Foreign aid from ‘new donors’ (aka emerging economies) now makes up around $10bn/year. And this has doubled in the last five years as the Economist noted last...
Why is inequality falling in Latin America?
If inequality is falling it's worth taking a closer look as to why. A range of new papers, seek to shed light on why inequality has fallen in some Latin...
The MIFFs – a whole new kind of country?
There’s a good piece (here) in the Economist on a whole new kind of country – the MIFFs (middle-income, failed or fragile states) picking up on a Global...
Is there a new kind of fragile state?
What do Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Sudan and perhaps Libya, Egypt and Tunisia have in common? Fragility and middle-income status. The World...
Are the emerging economies invincible?
There's a couple of interesting pieces this week on overheating in the BRICs and other emerging economies, notably in Asia - that is overheating in the...
What’s really happening to inequality?
It’s evident within-country inequality is back on the radar of some of the major international organisations including UNICEF and UNDP who are leading the...
Surprise impacts of the UK’s 0.7% GDP aid commitment?
News this morning from Reuters (here) that Ethiopia is buying 200 tanks from the Ukraine for US$100m (£62m). This reminded me of a similar figure from a few...
Would you rather be poor in a rich(er) country or rich in a poorer country?
Charles Kenny’s Getting Better is one of the books of the moment (here’s a summary and reviews in NYT and the Financial Times and listen to it here). It’s an...
How to subcontract your foreign aid budget
More UK aid to India debate this week (see earlier posts here and here). India has pledged $5bn in aid to help African countries meet the MDGs and got berated...
More from Global Dashboard
Let’s make climate a culture war!
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy
Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management...
Uncertainty and Humanitarian Action: What Donald Rumsfeld can teach us
Since its onset, one striking feature of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has been the narrative power of its novelty. This global narrative depicts COVID-19 pushing humanity towards a ‘historical divide’ of BC and AC (before and after COVID-19), where unknown,...